Yesterday, the Lexus-sponsored Darker Side of Green debate was held at the Skylight West in New York City, just as the press preview for the New York Auto Show was beginning. Numerous celebrities were in attendance, including Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Zach Braff, Tyson Beckord, and Emmy Rossum, along with other interested New Yorkers.

According to reports from the event, it was a lively and entertaining debate between environmental journalist Amanda Little and global warming skeptic Phelim McAlee, with humorous guidance from comedian Sarah Silverman, who served as moderator. Tonic.com described the setting thusly:

Regardless of raison d’être, downtown denizens and car execs alike mixed, mingled, cheered and jeered during the Lexus-hosted launch party for their newest stylish hybrid, the CT 200h, which culminated in an invigorating debate on global warming. Disco lights shaped like leaves and flowers swirled around Skylight Studios in tandem to the sounds of lost 80s classics, spun by Paul Sevigny and The Misshapes. But the music, celebs and cocktails were but precursors to the main event: a no-holds-barred verbal battle on the future of our planet.

The debate was more about larger environmental and political issues than cars per se, but it did have this tidbit related to the CT 200h in attendance, as noted by The Daily Green:

Silverman started the raucous debate by asking Little, “Why do you have a problem with the world potentially being like California all the time?…And it will melt all the guns, why are you against that?” Little responded gracefully, answering that her position is the same as ExxonMobile, NASA, the Pope and others, that “The appropriate debate is not whether [climate change] is happening, but what to do about it.” Little characterized the fight to address global warming as the “single biggest job creation engine of our time,” and she pointed to the Lexus in the back of the room as an example of “an innovation in response.”